Technology

It's 2 a.m. and you're changing your baby when you realize you've just used up your last diaper. Or you go to reach under your sink to grab another roll of toilet paper only to discover you've forgotten to order more. This isn't the sad, black-and-white world of late-night infomercials, but real life, Amazon.com says. The company is rolling out new hardware called the Dash button that promises to solve these scenarios. It's a small physical button that you can stick wherever, and press when you want to order more of something. 

When talking about retail, we're often left wondering, what's next? What are some of the technologies that will revolutionize the retail industry going forward? So, as far as what may be next for retail, after virtual reality technologies have established themselves, this is the next stage: haptic retail. Enabling online shoppers to not just see a product, but to touch it, feel it and truly evaluate it from every possible angle from the comfort of their own home.

Someday soon, buying items online may require you to smile before paying, no matter how high the price. At least, this is where Alibaba Group Holdings Inc.'s new technology seeks to lead us. Earlier this week, Alibaba Founder and Chairman Jack Ma unveiled the company's "Smile to Pay" system, which will allow users to confirm their identity by face-recognition technology rather than with passwords or other digital tokens. Ma showed off the new system in a presentation at the opening of the CeBit technology conference in Hanover, Germany.

U.K.-based startup Powa Technologies has developed PowaTag, a payment technology that allows consumers to purchase a product by simply taking a photo of it on their smartphone, making virtually any ad shoppable. Some of the most unique places for these shoppable ads have included bus stop windows and taxicab screens. 
The PowaTag platform combines technologies, including Bluetooth beacons, digital audio watermarks, QR codes and embedded social media links, to enable consumers to scan an image and purchase instantly via their smartphone.

Home Depot's efforts to advance tech innovation in retail will be getting a big boost from the company's latest initiative. The retailer has partnered with Georgia Tech University to create a cutting-edge research center, focused on advancing tech innovations, education and giving young talent an opportunity to grow. The new Home Depot Technology Center will allow the company to work with more than 40 startup companies housed at Georgia Tech.

Make no mistake about it: 3-D printing will be a huge part of the retail industry's future. While Gartner is forecasting that mainstream adoption of consumer 3-D printing is still five years to 10 years away, the retail industry is already feeling the shift. As the founder of a large online retailer and lifelong participant in the industry, I think this shift in producing power and the method by which products are made will transform retailers in five key ways: 

In an interview with Retail Online Integration yesterday at the National Retail Federation's Big Show in New York City, Charlie Larkin, senior director of the GameStop Technology Institute (GTI), discussed why the retailer believes technology and innovation are critical to its future, as well as some of the cool new things GameStop is doing to connect the digital and physical worlds in its stores.  

"Table commerce" (or perhaps "t-commerce") isn't a widely recognized channel of customer engagement, but The Neiman Marcus Group just may change that. Neiman Marcus is piloting three interactive tables from T1Visions in its Austin, Texas, Chicago, and Topanga, Calif., locations. The retail tables, prominently displayed in each store's shoe salon, feature a 32-inch Ultra HD 4K touchscreen, covered by a single continuous pane of glass that's customized in color per Neiman Marcus' specifications. The touchscreens are powered by T1Visions' OneShop application that allows shoppers to browse and filter Neiman Marcus' in-store and out-of-store inventory.

After what most would consider a brutal holiday shopping season last year thanks to a well-publicized data breach, Target is rebounding with a slew of mobile and digital investments aimed at driving foot traffic. Target is the latest brand to partner with Google's Art Copy & Code program, which aims to reinvent digital advertising for iconic brands such as Nike. For Target's holiday campaign, Google helped create a mobile website with six mini-games. The campaign was created by creative agency 72andSunny with Psyop and Stinkdigital as the production partners. 

Amazon.com employee Rejinaldo Rosales used to wander stacks of shelves to pick up merchandise for orders before finally returning to his station to place them in bins and send them to their next stop. But this summer, squat orange robots, called Kiva, began zooming around the shelves instead, picking up goods and carrying them to Rosales at his station. The result? What used to take hours of walking can happen in mere minutes instead. While walking the aisles was "good cardio," the new system lets him get through more orders since he stands in one place, Rosales said.